Gunning For Angels

Chapter 1

Murder is born of love, and love attains the greatest intensity in murder.

Octave Mirbeau, Writer

The golden necklace was severed. The delicate angel-wing
pendant was caught in a clot of blood, resembling hot sealing wax
against translucent skin. Her neck jutted to the side in an awkward
angle.

Eyes full of empty stared upward as she lay sprawled out like
some grotesque pin-up girl. An all-American beauty served up on
cheap linoleum, a Jackson Pollock canvas of bullet holes and blood
spatter.

A diaper-clad baby girl with blond ringlets sat next to the
woman’s head, wailing at full lung capacity. The baby’s fist
spasmodically beat against the dead woman’s face, splattering rips and
reams of blood in every direction of the tiny kitchen.

One of the baby’s hands caught the necklace and clutched it, her
body jolting with the violence of her crying. The golden angel wings
were sullied red with blood and glinted dully in the late afternoon sun
that slanted through the twisted blinds over the sink.

Bloody handprints smeared down the cracked plaster wall,
revealing the woman’s last gruesome moments as she struggled down
the wall, across the floor...

Never no more.

CHAPTER ONE

Even a small mouse has anger.

Native American, Tribe Unknown

When Enid Iglowski hauled off and slugged Joey Wysocki, she
hadn’t been thinking about anything, she’d been simply reacting. The
instant her fist made contact with Joey’s nose and she heard the
sickening sound of bone and cartilage breaking, she also heard the
sound of the last two weeks of her Junior year of high school getting
flushed down the toilet.

The rest of the night proved to be a goulash of school officials,
police officers and Joey’s parents – all punctuated by the glaring
absence of her own missing-in-action mother. By the time they located
her mother, who had somehow gotten her butt super-glued to a bar
stool again, Joey’s parents had filed a police complaint against Enid
and she’d gotten expelled under the school’s new zero-tolerance policy.

It was now one week later and, as the Greyhound bus pulled out
of Abilene, Enid was feeling the effects of forty hours on the road – and
on the run. Her teeth were gritty and she longed to take a hot shower
and crawl into her own bed that she had left behind in Florida. She
could hardly believe that she had another seventeen hours to endure
until she got to Phoenix, where she was determined to find her real
father, a man named Jack Fox, whom she had never heard of until one
week ago.

Henry Iglowski was the man she had thought was her father.
Both Enid and Henry found out at the same moment that Henry was
not her father, that he was simply the man that her mother had duped
into believing that he was Enid’s real father for the last sixteen years.

Her ears still rang with her mother’s drunken ravings on the day
Henry had packed up and left.

The way her mother had screamed after him, “You know the kid
that you thought was your kid? Enid isn’t yours, you piece of shit! Her
real dad was a one-night stand in Phoenix! You remember Phoenix,
don’t you? Jack Fox, that was his name! HA! You’ve been raising
another man’s kid!”

Enid had stood in the front door, staring at her mother in horror.
Henry had been throwing boxes into the back of a borrowed pickup
truck. He froze, staring at her mother in shock.

It occurred to Enid that her mother didn’t seem to realize what
she had said. She had that cloudy, where’s-my-drink look as she
covered a burp, steadied herself against the Honda, turned and
disappeared into the house.

From across the yard, Enid’s eyes met Henry’s, and she saw that
he didn’t believe a word her mother had said.

Then he did.

Since that day one week ago, Enid had had the horrible sensation
of not just being expelled from school, she felt like she’d been expelled
from her whole life.

After three nightmarish days of being stuck at home with her
drunk and/or hungover mother, Enid decided to take matters into her
own hands. She stole four hundred dollars from her mother’s checking
account and another forty dollars from her whiskey kitty. She also
swiped Henry’s Glock 17, which her mother had hidden from him.

Enid wasn’t exactly sure why she took the gun except that it
made her feel safer. She had no doubt that her mother would report
the gun as stolen and would have the police on her butt faster than her
mother could dive on a Smirnoff screwdriver on a Sunday morning.

Enid had used up her last chance with Joey’s broken nose. Her
mother had assured her that her next stop was Juvie detention hall.
And the thought of going to Juvie detention, where her archnemesis,
Jackie Utton, was currently residing, made Enid sweat harder than a
hooker at a Baptist revival.

Since grade school, Jackie Utton had been using teenage terrorist
tactics and kicking the crap out of her on a regular basis, and every bit
of trouble that Enid had gotten into at school had been directly related
to defending herself against what Enid referred to as “the psychopath.”
Jackie had pushed her, shoved her, pinched her, tripped her and
pummeled her so many times that Enid had gotten into the habit of
slinking through the school, stealthy as a Navy SEAL.

Not that her mother ever cared or understood or even took her
side! According to her mother, Enid couldn’t kick a can across a
deserted parking lot without running into trouble and coming back
with three reasons why it wasn’t her fault.

It constantly amazed Enid that, for a kid who got good grades
and didn’t smoke, drink, cuss or let boys grab her hand and shove it down their pants to feel up their junk, she spent a lot of time in the
principal’s office.

If I end up in Juvie with Jackie Utton, I am dead dog meat on a
stick.

She was relieved to be putting Florida behind her, but at the
thought of finding and meeting her real father, she felt queasy. To
make herself feel better, she dug her hand into her backpack and
gripped the handle of the gun that was as mysterious and dangerous as
Joey’s thing had been.

Boys are scary. Guns are cool!

Enid squeezed the gun’s handle and sent a prayer speeding up
the highway toward Phoenix.

Enid whipped her hand out of the backpack. She glared at the
chunky kid with the greasy cowlick who had proven nosier than a
truffle-seeking piglet.

“What’s in your backpack?” he asked, poking at it curiously.

“None of your business.” Enid shoved his hand away.

“It looked like you were praying,” the chunky kid frowned.

A woman’s pudgy hand reached from behind his seat and
handed him a sandwich that smelled like sardines. For fourteen hours,
Enid had watched the hand appear and disappear as it handed up everything from toilet paper to boiled eggs to burnt snickerdoodle
cookies to a kid’s book entitled “So Your Daddy’s In Jail?” The kid
and the unseen woman at the other end of the hand never spoke. Their
entire existence seemed to be defined by the hand anticipating what he
needed and him accepting whatever was given to him.

Enid watched him chomp into the sandwich. Her stomach rolled
with nausea as a tiny sardine face, frozen in “oh my” surprise, peeked
out from between his fingers. He swallowed and turned to her. “Show
me what’s in the backpack or I’ll tell the bus driver you stole my five
dollars and hid it in there.”

Enid’s mouth fell open in astonishment. It was a mystery to her
why everyone from Jackie to Joey to complete strangers, including this
goofball twelve-year-old kid, took one look at her and pegged her for
someone that they could push around. It was strange that for all the
times she didn’t fight back with Jackie, that she finally snapped and hit
somebody.

Punching Joey had felt good.

Really good.

“Show me what’s in the backpack or I squeal louder than a stuck
pig.”

She leaned forward and hissed, “Sure as my name is Jackie
Utton, if you rat, I’m going to pop that little head off your shoulders,
kick it down the highway and use it for target practice.”

“Cool!” His eyes widened with admiration. “Who are you going
to kill?”

“Shhh!” Enid looked around, making sure no one had heard.

“Can I hold it?” He asked, reaching for the backpack.

She shoved his hand away and, hoping that she sounded
convincing, she whispered, “You say one word to anyone and I’ll pop
you – with the gun, not my fist, you little punk.”

His eyes got wide as he gave her a new look of respect. He made a
“zip” motion on his lips, locked them with an imaginary key and threw
it out.

Enid settled back, wishing that she had sat next to anybody but
this kid.

I just threatened to shoot him and now he respects me?

A thought occurred to her. She frowned, troubled. Back in
school, when Jackie had first started picking on her, what if she had
pretended to be tough? Would Jackie have left her alone? Could she
have avoided the last four years of torment?

“You are so going to end up in jail,” the kid said matter-of-factly.

Enid shot him a look, rattled.

“My dad’s in jail,” the kid said sadly.

“Sorry to hear that,” Enid mumbled.

His head snapped toward her in astonishment, “How’d you
hear?”

“What?” She asked, confused.

“About my dad! How do you know about that?” He eyed her
suspiciously.

“You just told me. Duh.”

“Oh.” He sat back. After a long moment, he asked, “Your dad in
jail?”

Enid shook her head. Everything she knew about her real father,
she had found out from the Internet. He was a private detective,
divorced and wasn’t on any of the social networking sites. He didn’t
even have a website for his business. Enid had called his office but,
when she heard the secretary’s voice, she had hung up.

The hand appeared with a pillow and a blanket. “Bedtime,” the
kid sighed happily.

Enid watched him tuck himself in and had a jangly-stomach
thought.

What if he doesn’t like me?

The kid nudged her and whispered, “Thanks for showing me.”

Frowning, Enid turned away and stared out the window. In
daylight, the landscape had been speckled with gas stations, fast food
joints, and billboards. Now that it was night, it was dotted with the
neon lights from gas stations, fast food joints and billboards.

She re-focused her eyes and stared at her reflection in the
window: a pale heart-shaped face with hazel eyes and shoulder-length
brown hair, which was in the habit of confounding her comb and doing
whatever the heck it wanted. Last summer, her mother had taken her
shopping for a bathing suit and, after giving her a knowing up-and-
down evaluative look in the changing room, had shrugged and said, “At
least you have a good nose.”

Enid was waiting impatiently for the morning she would wake up
and her scrawny flat-chested body would magically morph into cute.
Or, at the least, something in the same zip code as cute.

She sighed, wondering if her mom would get un-drunk long
enough to realize that she was missing a daughter. Enid had a feeling
the gun would be missed long before she was.

Probably won’t know I’m gone till there’s no one there to wake her
up in time to go to bed.

Enid kept expecting police sirens to scream the bus to a stop so
that cops could drag her off and force her back to Florida where Dad...

Enid felt tears burn her eyes.

She corrected herself.

Henry.

The name sounded foreign in her mouth.

Henry had been her father for as long as she could remember.
He’d been to her school plays, read her essays and short stories, and,
when she had been so obsessed with winning a trophy and lost again in
the annual school science fair, he bought her a giant trophy with a
winged goddess on top. He had the gold plaque engraved: Enid Ivy Rose
Iglowski, First Place, International Invitational Science Fair.

He told her that his contest was ‘Invitational’ and she was the
only one invited. Without him, she would’ve been robbed of her best
memories.

Enid was jolted out of her thoughts as the bus hit another
pothole. At the thought of meeting Jack Fox, who didn’t know she even
existed, panic rose up in her throat. Enid stuck her hand in the
backpack, grabbed the Glock and sent out another prayer.

William Elliott Kern:
Whew. one telling his story, in the Bar, to his friend, who questions some circumstances that need clarity, The Confusion comes from a man, carrying his dead friend Chappies, while conversing with himself, and Chappies, and his alter ego......a broken mind, not yet forgotten..........The Author ...

Sammy Styles:
It is one of those stories that keeps you on the hook till the last moment. A roll of pictures were piling up and with continuous moving, it was like I was watching a film. The scenes were dramatic with a bit of every emotion. The story contains every essence of mystery, romance and adventur...

Jessica:
This is a story that I could not stop reading. It is amazing how everything flowed together and what happened in this book is one that I would not have expected. Very talented author and a great read.

NRF:
This was a very interesting story line, although the author did not go far enough in explaining the war and why some received special powers and some didn't. I really enjoyed this story and look forward to reading more of this author's writing.

Nishant Jain:
Plus points-* the story is quite interesting* well detailed(u can easily imagine andpicture what the narrator is trying to say)* huge twist in the endImprovements-- i feel the story unfolds a bit slowlyIt is definitely worth a shot. I have no regrets reading BREAKING POINT.

Deleted User:
Your San Quentin episode cuts an incredible parallel to something with which I am involved. Sounds real enough. Read just the four chapters thus far. Looking forward to continuing. Roy Jenner.https://www.inkitt.com/royjennerFinished now, Great read. Well done Steve.Enjoyed it to the end.re Plot...

Kashaf Azmat:
The concept is excellent everything is well defined that you can picture the whole scenario which makes you feel connected to the plot and this is the thing that catches my eye and this what i am looking for in every novel.Keep it up

Jim E. Johnson:
Rarely do I find a mystery that peeks my interest, but Jack Huber's Pat Ruger reminds me of Parker's Spenser or Spillane's Hammer! Strong character with the right connections and plot drivers to keep anyone engaged and never putting it down.The encounters of the characters Ruger engages, continue...

marlalancaster:
As in the title of my review I love it. Little cussing but overall it is amazing I am a huge mystery fan and I can always guess who did it after the first chapter but I would never have guessed it was the ..... that was the florist I love the florist's touch I mean so good her heart was in the ri...

mray2174:
I did like this story. I would totally recommend it to a friend, but it didn't seem like a book. Your writing style reminded me of a fan fiction writer, always adding in tiny details and making things like "Oh, my name is [name that no one would ever name a child] and here is my life story. Oh, d...

Barbara Zavela:
Do you know the song, 'Imagine' by John Lennon?If you had a chance for a world like the one described in that song, would you grab it with both hands or turn away and reject it.This story pulls you in from the beginning with well-written scenarios. The author offers you the opportunity to bring y...

Other Collections

About Us:

Inkitt is the world’s first reader-powered book publisher, offering an online community for talented authors and book lovers. Write captivating stories, read enchanting novels, and we’ll publish the books you love the most based on crowd wisdom.